Ralph Ellison

For Piri Thomas, being a dark-hued Latino in 1930s New York was far from the best of worlds. His siblings were fair-skinned, like his Puerto Rican mother, but he took after his black Cuban father, whose unsettled feelings about race scarred both of them. Thomas fell into gangs and drugs, shot a police officer during a robbery and ended up in prison for seven years.

He emerged from incarceration a writer, whose journey of self-discovery brought him enduring recognition as the author of a coming-of-age classic, "Down These Mean Streets." The 1967 memoir, often compared to Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land" and "The Autobiography of Malcolm X,"...

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For Piri Thomas, being a dark-hued Latino in 1930s New York was far from the best of worlds. His siblings were fair-skinned, like his Puerto Rican mother, but he took after his black Cuban father, whose unsettled feelings about race scarred both of...